Welcome back to The Rundown, our daily breakdown on comic news stories we missed from the previous day. Have a link to share? Email our team at rundown@multiversitycomics.com.
In case you missed it, Jeff Lemire and Dustin Nguyen are reteaming on “Little Monsters,” a post-apocalyptic series about child vampires.
– Dark Horse have brought the MMORPG EVE Online back to comics with “EVE Online: Capsuleer Chronicles,” by writers Sam Maggs (“Critical Role Origins”) and Melissa Grey (The Buried), alongside artist Kieran McKeown (“Crime Syndicate), inker Dexter Vines, and colorist Sebastian Cheng. The first issue of the four-part digital miniseries is available for free online here. The book follows a capsuleer with an addiction to neuro-chems as she fights in the prolific Battle for Raravoss. It is the first EVE series from Dark Horse since 2015’s “EVE: Valkyrie.” “EVE Online: Capsuleer Chronicles” #1 is out now with a cover by Jeremy Wilson.
– Marvel and Scholastic announced their latest middle-grade graphic novel, “Shuri and T’Challa: Into the Heartlands” by writer Roseanne A. Brown (A Song of Wraiths and Ruin) and artists Natacha Bustos (“Runaways,” “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur”), Dika Araújo (“Amor em Quadrinhos”) and Claudia Aguirre (“Marvel Voices: Pride”). The book follows a 12-year-old Shuri as she lives in the shadow of her brother, the future Black Panther, on the sacred Soul Washing Day, where she’s given her chance to stand out. “Shuri and T’Challa: Into the Heartlands” releases April 5, 2022.
– “A Dark Interlude,” the quasi-sequel to “Fearscape” by Ryan O’Sullivan and Andrea Mutti, is returning after a year of delays with Piotr Kowalski replacing Mutti on art duties for the book’s last three issues. “A Dark Interlude” issues #1 and #2 were released in November and December of last year, before delays left the title entirely absent through 2021. Kowalski will join O’Sullivan and colorist Vladimir Popov on the metafictional fantasy title in January 2022. “Piotr Kowalski is an incredible artist, and I’m extremely excited to have him join Vlad, Deron, Vault, and myself on the last three issues of ‘A Dark Interlude.’ Seeing the Fearscape and its cast of characters through the eyes of Piotr’s incredibly detailed pen has been breathtaking,” said O’Sullivan. “Admittedly, I usually hate it when art changes mid-way through a book, but given the metafictional nature of ‘A Dark Interlude,’ we’ve gone ahead and made it part of the story. This was all part of my master plan, you see. The big delay between Issues 2 and 3? Why, I suppose you could say it was a… ‘Dark Interlude.'” “A Dark Interlude” #3 releases January 26 for US$3.99 with a cover by Ariela Kristantina.
– “How to Read Comics the Marvel Way,” the informative Marvel miniseries by Christopher Hastings and Scott Koblish has been officially released online after being delayed by the Diamond shutdown in 2020, and its subsequent absence from Marvel’s solicitations. The full series has already been made available on comiXology and Marvel Unlimited. The series will still be released physically as a collected edition in September 2022. The book teaches readers the mechanics of comics through the use of a Spider-Man adventure where he tracks down Mysterio. This announcement comes in the wake of Marvel’s growing emphasis on its digital publishing and a move away from Diamond Distributors.
– “Marvel Voices: Heritage” #1, the anthology focused on Marvel’s suite of indigenous American creators and characters, has been delayed to January 12, seven weeks after its intended release date. The issue serves as a follow-up to “Marvel Voices: Indigenous Voices” #1 from last year, which similarly focused on indigenous creators, as a part of Marvel’s wider Marvel Voices brand of podcasts and comics. “Marvel Voices: Heritage” #1 features stories from Rebecca Roanhorse, Nyla Innuksuk, Shaun Beyale, Natasha Donovan and many more, as well as a cover by Kyle Charles.
– Timur Bekmambetov, the filmmaker behind Wanted, Night Watch and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, will collaborate with POW! Entertainment through his production house Bazelevs to develop a cinematic universe based on Stan Lee’s early horror comics, beginning with “Sawbones” and “Carnival of Killers.” Sawbones is the story of a young boy transported into the horrors of a fictional mental asylum, while the period piece Carnival of Killers features a mother and her psychic daughter hiding from a tornado in a circus carnival stuck in the midst of an alien invasion.
Continued below“Some fans may not know this, but Stan Lee wrote several horror comic book series in the 1940s and 1950s before superhero comics became big in the 1960s,” said Gill Champion, president of POW! Entertainment. “Stan relished revisiting the genre a few years ago when he wrote these stories, and we are excited to bring them to life with a director as visionary as Timur Bekmambetov.” Sawbones will be the product of writer Matt Greenberg, while Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer will pen Carnival of Killers. Both projects are in early pre-production.
– We Baby Bears, a prequel to the massively popular Cartoon Network series We Bare Bears will officially premiere on January 1, with ten episodes dropping on New Year’s Day, followed by two more each week. We Bare Bears was an adaptation of the webcomic “The Three Bare Bears” by Daniel Chong, who went on to write and create the series for Cartoon Network, up until its film finale We Bare Bears: The Movie in June of last year. We Baby Bears is instead developed by Manny Hernandez and follows the younger Grizz, Panda and Ice Bear, played by Connor Andrade, Amari McCoy and Max Mitchell, respectively, as they travel across worlds in a magic cardboard box. Cartoon Network has already given fans a look at the show’s style and its theme song from K-Pop group TRI.BE. We Baby Bears will run for 18 episodes between January 1 and January 29.
– Finally, Cobie Smulders will officially reprise her role as Maria Hill as a part of the cast for Marvel’s Disney+ series Secret Invasion, alongside the star-studded ensemble of Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke. The series adapts Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu’s event comic “Secret Invasion,” building on the advent of Skrull communities across the galaxy, as seen in Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home. Smulders last appeared as Hill in Avengers: Endgame, as well as Talos’s wife Soren impersonating Hill in Far From Home, in 2019.
